


some ordinary slaughter

by ennaih (aquandrian)



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Australian Gothic, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gothic, Grief, Mentions of childhood abuse, and obviously everyone is Australian, only this insisted on turning into, somewhat smutty too, yes Australian Gothic is a thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 21:09:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8816341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquandrian/pseuds/ennaih
Summary: A grieving Jyn Erso flees the city for her parents’ rural property. There’s a man living next door who is very very bad for her.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from _Nature Boy_ by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds.

The drive takes so much longer than she remembers. The city with its golden spike has disappeared from the rear view mirror so long ago. She’s driven down the wide curving motorway blasted through the rising hills where she can look out the car window at the many green tops of the trees and down to the muddy creeks far below. Taken the exit off through the quaint little historic town and the more industrial one, up and down the sloping roads past the old million dollar heritage estates and the new dollhouse complexes. Now in the mid-afternoon, she’s driving down the long winding roads between paddocks turning yellower as the lush highlands dry up and parch in the summer heat. When she turns into the lane and drives slower over the bumpy potholed track, she knows the place will be dusty and hot like every cliche of every Australian outback story. Except here high above the edge of the continent, the mud remains brown, not the intense ochre of the red centre. And yet she feels that presence of the ancient peopled land rolling out behind her, the sense of years and centuries, a millennia old consciousness watching her.

Jyn Erso parks her slightly smeared blue car by the ghost gums, and gets out to look at her childhood holiday home, now her parents’ retirement plan. It looks like so much work but they were always mad and industrious like that. The sun is harsh on the dark timber of the wraparound balcony, on the dull gleam of the corrugated iron sheets, and suddenly she remembers the dog that used to bound out to greet her with joyful wagging tail. Neddie who died under the wheels of a ute when she was away at uni. The knot in her chest tightens as she gets her wheelie out and slams the boot of the car down, a pressure she tries to ignore even though it lodges hard and heavy like it will never ever ease.

The old house next door looks just as shabby as when she was a child, so ugly and decrepit she shudders now just as she did then. Remembers as she crosses the dusty front yard that her parents told her the old man died some weeks back, that the grown up kids rarely come back. She doesn’t blame them, there’s such an air of nastiness and unease about that house it makes her appreciate her parents’ effort with their home so much more.

The lights work, the water runs clear. She checks the generator in the shed, wary about spiders skittering along the floor, and about walking into webs. But everything looks fine, enough petrol and wood out back, enough light bulbs and candles in the house. She restocks the fridge with the groceries she’s brought, setting her father’s old stereo playing The Church. As the sunshine drains from the vivid skies darkening over the hills, she takes her dinner out to the front verandah and sits on the worn wooden chair, listening to the cacophony of the bush at sunset. There’s a light burning in the window of the house next door, she observes that with some disinterest.

The air is so different out here, so clear and pure that she falls asleep the moment her head hits the pillow. She sleeps dead until some time in the weird hours when thunder crashes on the roof. Bolting upright in bed, heart in her mouth, she takes a moment to remember -- “Fucken possums” -- and flumps back against the pillow.

She had forgotten how creepy it is out here in the country. How the night presses up against the windows of the house, so black and oppressive. How the light of her torch glints off the peeling ghost white bark of the trees. How a lone yellow window will gleam halfway up the side of a black hill, too far away to hear her scream, too far to run, shut in on itself.

In the morning, she wakes to sunlight gleaming on the tiny embroidered flowers of her mother’s pillowcase. For about five minutes she lies there, happy. And then remembers. The tears leak from the outside corners of her eyes, trickle and soak into the pillowcase. It wasn’t romantic, it was so much more. He was her friend, a person of trust. And she knows she ought to be strong and carry on, do all the good and proper things of moving on and honouring his memory and everything he did for her. But the grief -- and the guilt, oh the guilt -- drags heavy on her limbs. And maybe it’s weak but she’s allowed herself this time, these few weeks away from the city and the well-meaning friends with their kind eyes and their lives of ceaseless activity, just these few weeks to hurt and grieve and be alone with her terrible thoughts.

She sleeps and cries those first few days away. Eventually she makes herself get out of bed and have a shower and make something to eat. The water tastes different out here, that subtle change of chemicals. When she goes to plug her laptop cord into the wall, there’s a huntsman spider by the power outlet -- so big and hairy, the size of her palm, that she nearly hurls herself and the computer across the living room. Heart pounding, she reminds herself that they’re harmless, probably more scared of her than she of them. She still screams and jumps a mile when she’s trying to broom it out the back door and it nearly runs up the handle.

Her parents would be disgusted with her. But they’re in the city and she’s out here in god’s own country, forbidden to use spray anywhere because her mother has Views.

A few days later, she surfaces from an afternoon nap to the unmistakable distressing smell of burning. There’s grey smoke billowing past her parents’ bedroom window, too close to be backburning. Jyn grabs her phone, checking the filled dots, and heads for the front door, refusing to panic just yet.

There’s a roaring bonfire in the next yard, dirty with kerosene. Jyn chokes against the fumes, her eyes watering as she hurries over. Through the smoke and flames slanting on the hot breeze, there’s a man standing careless and idle, watching the fire as if this is some fucken thing he’s decided to do this very minute.

“Hey! Hi!” she yells out, trying to be heard over the crackling. It’s not even compost or branches he’s burning, it’s actual things of plastic and metal and totally illegal and probably toxic rubbish. She can see suitcases and chairs and boxes, hideously banal objects. “Hi, hello!” she calls again and waves her arms.

He cocks his head and then ambles around the great blaze towards the low dividing fence of steel mesh. She watches him approach, more concerned than annoyed. He’s not particularly appealing -- dark curling hair with a weird glimmer of light, popping sunnies on as he comes, his shoulders bared by a dark grey singlet, and his jeans dusty dark blue but surprisingly well tailored, scuffed sneakers.

“How yer going,” she hears herself say in automatic Strine, and even he seems a little surprised. “Sorry, christ,” Jyn adds, blushing, “force of fucken habit. Hi, I’m Jyn.”

He takes her hand, his touch dry and curiously smooth for a man working outdoors. “You’re the daughter, are you?”

Not a trace of ocker, she doesn’t even know why she’s surprised or embarrassed to have assumed he would be. There’s an edge to his consonants, that particular inflection of the city but she can’t pick if it’s Sydney or Melbourne.

“Yes, I’m -- my parents are --” she stammers, unnerved a little by the sunnies she’s now realising are expensive. Suddenly aware of her rumpled hoodie and tracky daks, her hair probably sticking out wild on one side. As their hands slip free, she says, “Yeah, I’m just down for a few weeks. Are you --” an abrupt reminder -- “look, what are you burning? Do you even -- that doesn’t look safe.”

His brows quirk, a sort of arrogance to his tone as he replies, “It’s just stuff. Nothing to be worried about. I’m Krennic, by the way. Orson. I don’t think we’ve ever met. Bit before your time.”

She nods automatically but now she’s looking closer at his face, noticing the signs of age in the contours of his cheekbones and the lines around his mouth. His hair is silvered a little among the curls, disconcertingly attractive. “I’m sorry about your dad,” she says without thinking. “I didn’t see him much but my mum said --” And then she remembers her own loss, wonders if it’s carved into her face like his loss maybe is on his. “Anyway, sorry.”

Krennic grunts deep in his throat, glancing back at the fire. “Yeah, well.” His tone is strange, almost poisonous. For a moment, she wants desperately to see his eyes, the colour and expression of them, if they’re kind or clever or cruel.

“Are you,” she hesitates, “are you here to clean out the place or something? I mean,” she adds, alarmed, suddenly realising how it sounds. His brows have arched again, imperious, as she stammers. “God, I didn’t mean it like that. I meant like are you here to take care of things and then dispose of the estate? I’m so sorry.”

He makes a little huff of amusement, his mouth twisting. A sardonic man, she realises. Dark curls and dark humour. “Something like that. I’m not staying. I’m just --” He shifts on his feet, the sun gleaming on his freckled shoulders, a weird jagged energy about him. “I have a novel to finish writing,” he explains abruptly, “and then, yeah, I’ll be out of here.”

“Oh.”

“Not to worry,” he drawls, stepping back, hands shoving into his jeans pockets. “Not too much more stuff to burn. We’ll be right.” He says it with such perfect mockery that she blushes again, furious.

He is not a nice man. She decides this over the next few days. A Google search turns up an author page, Goodreads reviews, the odd Guardian interview. She doesn’t recognise any of the titles but apparently he writes unpleasant dark novels about family secrets and unarticulated trauma. She buys one to her ereader on a stab of curiosity but can’t bring herself to actually start it. Instead she’s reading her childhood books -- Thiele and Baynton and Park -- as she lies on the couch in the living room with the rustle and buzz of insects at the fly-screened windows, and a glass of rose cordial dripping condensation on a coaster. Because her mother can sense wet rings on a table even half a state away.

She sees him in the yard a few more times, another bonfire that roars up to the white blue sky, dragging things from the cavernous shed behind his house to toss on the flames. Once he drives out of the property in an old beat up ute, his elbow on the open window. She catches a glimpse of his profile in the distance, dark blue shirt and rumpled curls, the everpresent sunnies like he’s some goddamned rockstar. His debut novel had won a few awards -- that explains the arrogance, doesn’t it?

Cassian rings but she doesn’t answer, instead texts back hours later that she’s fine and everything’s fine. He doesn’t call again. Her parents check up on her, Lyra trying so hard not to let her anxiety show. But mostly they leave her alone, and she’s grateful for that trust, that they know she’ll come back to them.

Even if sometimes she’s not certain of that herself.

A few days later, she sees Krennic through the living room window, chopping wood in his front yard. Rough workman’s gloves, bare dusty arms and his shoulders oddly beautiful. She watches as he loads up with a pile and walks towards her house. The gate rattles a short while later, and she opens the front door, coming out onto the verandah to watch him amble over. He has no charm for her and no conversation, just hot silvery blue eyes as he sets the wood down on the stand by the door, and jerks his chin in her general direction.

“Thanks,” she says with some bemusement, watching him go. He’s such a fucking cliche of the silent Aussie male and she hates how his hot eyes make her feel.

But she knows what good neighbours do, so the next day she drives into town to buy a sixpack of beer, something suitably manly or whatever. In the bottle-o, she calls her father, slightly at a loss, and Galen tells her she can’t go wrong with VB.

“Yeah, right, Dad. What if he’s into like that craft stuff?” she asks, peering through the frosted glass of the fridges.

“Then you smile and nod and stay the hell away from him,” Galen says firmly. “We don’t associate with their kind.”

Jyn laughs. “Really, Dad.”

The house seems no less menacing when she bangs on the screen door, so dark inside she barely makes out the shape of him emerging from the gloom. “Hi,” she says brightly, lifting up the case. “I just thought --”

He opens the screen door, the strangely beautiful eyes flicking from the beer up to her face with some curiosity. Bare feet, dark tracky daks, and a deep blue robe belted hastily over a bare chest. She finds herself staring at the pale smooth skin, no freckles but she wonders --

“That for me?”

“Oh! Yes.” Mortified, Jyn hands over the case, trying to look anywhere but at him. “Yeah, I just wanted to say thanks for the, for the -- you know.”

He smiles at her, deep grooves around his curling mouth. “No worries,” he says and it’s only a little sardonic this time. “Do you want to --” he draws back a little, quizzical as he gestures her in.

“No, no -- were you writing? Sorry, no, that’s okay, I’ve got stuff to do,” she babbles and flees back to her house.

It’s absurd, this self-consciousness. In the city, she’s confident and witty, totally able to hold her own with any guy, no matter how lofty his intellect. Maybe it’s being out here, maybe it’s this weird grieving time. But he intimidates her, in a not entirely unpleasant way, the slippage of arrogance and consideration. And she knows it’s mostly physical, the fact that she finds herself thinking about his eyes and his unruly hair, about the contour of his forearms and how his hands might feel on her. Whether he’d take hold of her or wait to be touched first. She thinks about this far too much and soon forgets her initial dislike.

One evening she comes out to the verandah with her dinner, the breeze turning cool as the colours change over the hills. Her plate on her knees, she hears when his front door opens, doesn’t look over but knows that he’s sauntering to the fence.

“What’s for dinner?” he calls out and he’s leaning on the chain links, beer bottle dangling from one hand. Everything is blue and deep golden brown at this time, the air full of the lingering heat from the day. And he’s all dark blue and a slight glimmer of pale skin, a wry oddly warm voice in the dusk.

“Pasta,” she calls back. “What are you having?”

He raises the bottle, and from where she is, she can see the boyish gleam of his smile.

“Very Strayan,” she replies with a laugh. He nods, totally self-deprecating and now charming for it.

“Mind if I join you?”

Because out here in the country, people ask permission to intrude on your privacy.

“Yeah, sure,” she says easily and watches as he unlatches the gate and comes through, the faint light catching the silver in his hair and the amber in the bottle. He doesn’t take the empty chair beside her, instead sits on the verandah floor, his back against the dark timber post, one foot on the step. He looks like some fucken photoshoot -- intriguing Aussie male in outback setting, all masculine symbols of rumpled hair and casual beer, blue jeans and dark blue shirt open a few buttons down -- behold such Aussie masculinity, ladies of the cities, and come marry the surly farmer writer and live with him in his quasi-gothic house of outback passion and terror.

Stifling the urge to snort, Jyn forks up the last of her pasta. Maybe she hasn’t quite let go of the dislike after all. “How’s the novel going?”

His brows quirk as he takes a sip, gazing out to the purple and green hills. Definitely self-deprecation today.

“Or is that not something I should ask?” she adds, slightly acid.

“Nah, it’s going well.” He glances over at her, very secretly pleased from the way the corner of his mouth turns up. “It’s going really well, actually.”

“What are you, like the next Henry Lawson?” she says dryly.

He snorts. “Not bloody likely. Anyway,” he adds after a sip, “I always preferred Baynton.”

Her skin thrills. “I’m reading her at the moment. What’s it about? Your novel.” And she is curious, certainly not about to reveal that she’s also reading one of his.

“Oh.” He gestures vaguely with the bottle. “It’ll sound like shit when I tell you. Always does. Could be the greatest fucken work of art, revolutionise the literary world as we know it, but you whack it down to a few lines or a fucken _**synopsis**_ ” -- he sneers -- “and it sounds like drivel.”

She laughs under her breath, sitting back to regard the view, her meal done. The breeze moves over them, scented with the strange green and sour smell she associates with the country.

“What do you do?” he asks with such diffidence, the dark head turning towards her once more in the gloom.

“I’m a cop.”

That startles him. “Really? What, like undercover or --”

“No, just your regular old senior constable.” She lets out a breath of a laugh, her gaze moving up to where the stars are coming out from the hazy coloured clouds. “Senior Constable Erso, attached to the Hurstville Local Area Command.”

“Huh. Impressive.”

She looks over to see him prop his arm on a drawn up knee, the empty bottle dangling once more. “It is, isn’t it? It’s a great life …” And even she can hear the bleak cynicism in that.

“I bet,” he says quietly. It almost sounds like compassion, and she’s not sure she wants that, not from him.

“I remember your father. He was quite mean to me. And Neddie.”

He’s gone still now, a certain tension that delights her in a small vicious way.

“Neddie was my dog, he was the cutest little beagle, and your father hated him. Never wanted him anywhere near your property. I never saw him kicking him but I bet he did,” she says darkly. “I’m sure he did.”

“He hated beagles.” His voice dispassionate, Krennic puts the bottle down on the step. “Said they were nervy little things, useless. I wanted one once and --” he shakes his head. “Yeah, never going to happen.”

Jyn watches him for a few long seconds, then says it. “Did he beat you?”

“Of course.” His arm outstretched over his knee, they both watch as his fingers curl in. “That was discipline, made men out of us.”

“Even the girls?” He had two sisters, she remembers now. One died young, the other works with Aboriginal kids on a mission somewhere.

Krennic laughs, a short cruel sound. “No, they had to be real women. Pure and chaste and pretty and spirited. My god, he was a bastard.” The violence spits out of him in the dark.

“Is that what you write about?”

That laugh again, so very bitter. “My fucked up family? Yeah, naturally.” His fist flexes, the fingers uncurling back out. “That’s what gets the awards. The more dysfunctional, the better.”

“Do you make it up?” she asks it low and sly. “Is any of it true?”

“Oh, all of it. Every single fucking word.”

He’s lying and they both know it. The complexity of that malice lingers in her mind as she gets up to take her plate inside. The house is warm from the day, and she moves through to the kitchen, turning a lamp on. On the fridge is a picture of the squad, Cassian and Baze and Bodhi and Kaytoo. All those men grinning at the camera, and she laughing in their midst, bright and happy. She avoids the blind blue gaze of Chirrut, and goes back out to the verandah.

Krennic glances up when she holds the chilled bottle out to him. The golden light from the window behind her catches his eyes glinting dark blue in the shadows. “Thanks.” That dark blue shirt, the collar spread flat, unbuttoned enough that she can see pale smooth skin again, warm and touchable in this light. She looks down at it, looks at the curve of his chin as he gazes back up at her. His mouth is sullen and pretty, uneven curves of cruelty and vulnerability. She looks at his mouth and knows he is all poison, too damaged himself to be anything but toxic and hurtful. He’s the kind of man who sets every learned instinct of female self-preservation clanging with alarm. So she leans down and kisses him.

He tastes of beer and oddly sweet. His hand comes to her hair, that chin tipping up to angle better, his mouth opening warm to her lips and then her tongue. He kisses like danger and resentment, and with unexpected gentleness. Maybe that rather than the wrongness is why she takes his hand and leads him into her parents’ home.

In her parents’ bed with its embroidered covers and soft warm whiteness, he eases her back against the pillows, a dark serious man with soft mouth and teeth nipping at her lower lip. She gets to bury her fingers in the curly mess of his hair, and spreads her legs for the weight of his body coming to lie between her thighs. The dark blue shirt pulls across his back, and she bites at his shoulder, wanting to tug at the fabric but also wanting him to keep it on and fuck her with it half open.

They don’t speak, not a single word. Breaths in the evening hush as the cicadas chirp outside and the breeze comes cool through the window, and they shed their clothes, finding each other with kisses and hands. And then it’s moans as she arches up under his mouth, her hands in his hair. He turns her over and fucks her from behind, slow and deep, an exquisite beautiful rhythm that takes her breath away and has her sobbing with pleasure, holding his hand to her breast as she mouths the pillow and moves with him. He comes after she does, gracious enough in that, and doesn’t come inside her, churlish enough to spend himself on the small of her back. It annoys her a little, the distasteful sensation of wet turning rapidly cold, but she forgives him when he cleans it up with a tissue and kisses her shoulder.

In the morning, he is still there beside her. She turns her head to look at his sleeping profile, half fascinated and half appalled at herself. His lashes are palest brown, a sort of unnerving innocence in the way they rest, just barely touching the thin freckled skin of his cheekbones. He is beautiful, she’s realising that now. Not wanting to wake him, she touches her fingertip to the damp curve of his mouth, and wonders if she can tell him about her loss, if she should.

She doesn’t until the third day. It’s been a haze of dreamy sex and so much kissing, of making out in the chair on the verandah as the night creeps over the hills, her in his lap, her singlet half pushed up with her bare breast in his broad hand. Of fucking with her face against the wall, his breath hot on her hair, and that same beautiful ceaseless rhythm like music, like fucken poetry. Of looking up from her book to see him with his arm braced against the front door, he pulling open his jeans with one hand, and fucking her on the couch, her bare legs spread wide as he tips her back on his cock, and grasps her ankle with one firm hand, his mouth sucking on the underside of her jaw. But mostly they’ve been in bed, naked and caressing, murmuring into each other’s skin, murmuring of need and pleasure. He’s in the same languor with her, expressive and tender, his sarcasm almost sweet in the few things he says, little jokes when they eat together and move from kitchen to bedroom, from couch to bed.

She twines her fingers through the soft strong curls of his hair, and tells him one afternoon. “My friend died three weeks ago. He was in my squad, he wasn’t my partner but he -- it was my fault.”

Orson frowns, an instinctive denial rather than disapproval. But he doesn’t say it. Intelligent and calm, he strokes the point of her chin. “What happened?”

She’s not supposed to but she does tell him the details. How the operation went horribly wrong, how people were tossing words like hero and sacrifice around, and how that just makes her want to throw up because it’s not true at all. “We aren’t heroes, we aren’t anybody. We’re there to do a job, to get things done, to protect people, even from themselves. And there’s an investigation and there’ll be an inquest, and I’ll have to --” she’s crying now, furious at herself but also weirdly glad. Because he kisses her tears and keeps his face so close to hers on the pillow, all blue grey eyes and tender lashes and soft mouth. And he says, “You’ll be all right” and she wants to believe him but the facts remain. “I’ll have to give evidence, in front of his parents, in front of his family. They’ve lost a son, their only son, and what am I whinging about, having to fucking sit up there and talk about how I survived?”

She cries and cries, held against his bare shoulder, his face pressed against her hair. And eventually she hiccups and says, “Are you gunna put this in your book?”

Orson laughs gently, his voice ripe with humour. “Do you want me to?”

“I thought you only tell lies in your novels.” She pulls away a little, glad for the banter as she wipes her face.

“All writers are liars. And you,” he kisses her mouth lightly, “ you only tell the truth.”

“I do,” she replies, proud as she faces him. His smile deepens, something profound and lovely in the way he gazes at her and touches her face.

“Are you going to come to Sydney with me?” she asks a few days later. They’re naked in the big corrugated iron pool out the back of his house, floating together in the water, her back against his chest, his arms linked loose around her. It’s mid-afternoon but the sun’s not quite lethal today, a comfortable cloud haze above that shields them, the air hot enough that the water feels like cool bliss.

“What?” Again, she’s actually surprised him.

She cranes her head back to look at his face. “I want to take you back to Sydney,” she says, unabashed. “You don’t want this house, it’s not good for you. And I can’t stay here forever, this isn’t my life.” Her voice softens. “And I want you in my life. I want you to meet my friends and see my apartment, have breakfast with me at my favourite cafe. I want to show you where I live. How I live.”

His mouth twists a little. “Are you going to save me, are you?”

“No …”

His eyes glint with that latent cruelty. “I thought you didn’t believe in heroes.”

“It’s not about that. Stop it. Don’t you see --” She disengages, floating to turn to him. Refuses to be hurt by this, by her own emotional bravery. “You know what I mean.”

“Do you?”

She says nothing in reply to that, watching him with what she knows is reproach.

He takes in a deep breath, his gaze skittering away over the old house and the green high hills. The blue grey sky arches over him, a beautiful damaged man.

“What were you going to do after this?” she asks, careful to be gentle.

He lifts a wet hand to his face, rubbing his eye. Drops of water glisten silver in his hair, slide along the contour of his cheekbone. “I don’t know. Go back to Sydney, get drunk, submit the novel.” He drops his hand, eyes bright and sarcastic. “Get drunk some more.”

“Find a new woman, get high and get fucked?”

“Pretty much.” He’s being deliberately callous now, they both know it.

“All right,” she says calmly. “You do what you have to do. You know now what I want.” She floats in closer and kisses him, hot and demanding, enough that he grasps at her breasts and responds.

They fuck for another two weeks, a little nastier and edgier than before, and she leaves without saying goodbye. In her dusty blue car, she drives back through the parched paddocks and the towns, back onto the swooping curves of the motorway. It takes much faster to get back, the cityline rising in the distant haze. She returns to her apartment and her parents, slips back into the familiar routine of her life. Tells herself she isn’t waiting for him at all, that she will tolerate none of that delusional romantic bullshit of the steady patient woman waiting with hands folded in her demure lap, waiting for her man.

She goes to her counselling sessions, gives evidence at the inquest, and meets up with the squad. They all get very drunk together and cry and tell the same stories about Chirrut over and over again so he stays clear and beloved in their minds. Cassian tells her he’s been drinking too much ever since it happened, and they cry some more before she yells at him that she cannot afford to have an alco as a partner so he better harden the fuck up and get his shit together. She agrees to attend drug and alcohol counselling with him. The coroner hands down a report that clears them of any misconduct and makes recommendations for stricter procedures.

And because she isn’t waiting for a man to come find her, she starts dating a cop from Organised Crime. He’s kind and well-adjusted and a pretty good kisser, and eventually starts making noises about meeting her parents at Christmas. She knows this is probably a good idea.

Then one day she’s walking home after brunch with her mother, smiling at the lush green trees and blue skies of Sydney summer. And halfway down her street, she sees a man leaning against the low stone wall outside her apartment building. Her heart lurches but she forces herself to keep the same pace, words churning in her head, glad that for once she dressed up to see her mum. Dark blue jeans and her favourite blue silk top, her hair pulled high in a ponytail, she feels every bit a proper Sydneysider.

He looks exactly the same. It makes her suspect that nothing at all has changed, and maybe that’s the worst thing possible for her. The same dark blue shirt open a little too low, the same dark curls with their touch of silver, and the same serious face all wary and wounded, eyes flickering with some anxiety as he straightens up. There’s a jacaranda a little way behind him, vivid mauve and green, shedding petals on the footpath. It’s all so fucken beautiful she can’t breathe for a second.

Then:

“How did you find where I live?”

He grins like he’s caught off guard. “Your mother told me.”

“My --” she stares, aghast, and then slowly realises the extent of her mother’s duplicity. “I just -- she never -- oh my god.” She takes in a deep breath and focuses on him. “What do you want, Orson?”

His throat works, tongue slipping out to lick his lips. She knows it’s nerves but still she stares, remembering his taste and the particular shape of his mouth on hers.

“My book launch is next week. I thought you might like to come with me.”

She leans against the wall like he had. Perfectly cocky and brash. “You need a date, is that it?”

“Well …” His eyes glint, he knows exactly what she’s doing. “I suppose, yeah. It’ll probably be fucken boring --”

“Wankers wanking everywhere?”

“Oh fuck yeah. And literary wankers are the worst. All making out like they fucken drank with Fitzgerald and got high with Bukowski.”

“Don’t know them,” she lies cheerfully.

He grins. “Not worth knowing. What d’you reckon?”

Jyn looks him up and down, thoroughly provocative and shameless about it. “You bring me an advance copy?”

He takes a step forward, his eyes hot blue. The jacaranda is cascading mauve on the hot breeze across them. “Yeah, it’s in the car.”

She grins up at him. “Go get it.”

He catches up to her at the apartment door. All she sees is a blur of blue silver eyes and dark hair, and then he’s kissing her into the apartment, his mouth familiar and new and everything she wants.

The cop from Organised Crime never does meet her parents. The book launch is indeed terribly boring, and they get caught fucking on the balcony. It makes for a small scandal on the gossip sites and talk shows, and Orson’s novel does very well out of it. Jyn takes him to drinks with the squad who greet him with very stony expressions, and then somehow manage to send her to the bar with a very complicated order. When she gets back to the table, they’re all great mates, and Orson refuses to ever tell her what was said.

Jyn moves out of her apartment and into a house with him on a tree-lined avenue with a whole array of friendly little cafes to frequent. A week later, Orson brings home a rescue beagle who pees with excitement when either of them return to the house. Her name is Baynton.

**Author's Note:**

> Why is Chirrut the only one who dies? Because at the time of writing this fic, he was the only one we knew for certain was going to die, thanks to the SWCE panel.
> 
> Yes, that was very much influenced by a certain icky as fuck Mendo movie named Beautiful Kate. Call it a fixit fic.
> 
> Also this is pretty much my modern version of _The Chosen Vessel_ , a short story by Barbara Baynton which was in turn a female Australian Gothic version of Henry Lawson's _The Drover's Wife_.
> 
> The "writers are liars" line is totally from Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, Preludes And Nocturnes to be precise.
> 
> And this is what Orson looks like:
> 
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> that last gif by dawn-quijote, the rest I made.


End file.
